Exploring the Prague Castle and Christmas Markets

On our first day in Prague we woke up early and caught the tram up to Prague Castle, which is on a hill overlooking the city. Prague Castle is the biggest Castle in the world, and has been home to Kings, Roman Emperors and Presidents of the Czech Republic, it is also home to the Czech Crown Jewels.

The Castle itself is almost like a mini City, with four different Cathedrals and Churches, several towers, a vineyard and a cute little street full of old fashioned colourful houses.

Outside St Vitus. Cathedral

There were several different ticket types you could buy, each one giving access to different parts of the Castle. We bought the standard ticket which has the highlights as we didn't plan on spending the entire day there.

Our first stop was St Vitus Cathedral, which is overseen by the Archbishop of Prague. The Cathedral is huge, and has some amazing Stained Glass. Bradley thinks these are the most impressive stained glass he has seen (designed by Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha! - Bradley), the colours were amazing, but I didn't think they could top the stained glass at Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

The lovely Christmas tree in front of St Vitus Cathedral

It was freezing!

Still got our souvenir umbrellas

Our next stop was the pretty Golden Lane, a street dating back to the 15th Century with eleven colourful houses. Each house was either a cute little shop selling souvenirs or ceramics, or decorated in period style showing how people lived at that time.

The houses were very tiny and we had to duck into the little doorways, and felt like giants inside.

We left the Castle and made our way back down into the City through the vineyard surrounding the Castle. The Castle had some amazing views out over the City. Prague is a beautiful city, but doesn't have much of a city scape.

I can imagine the vineyard would be quite lovely in Summer when it's sunny as there is a restaurant that overlooks the city, but it was a bit too cold to enjoy in Winter.

We stopped for lunch at a Spanish restaurant at the bottom of the Castle and had a huge Paella between the both of us. It was delicious but I was unnerved by the sight of the Prawn eyes staring at me, I'm not used to eating whole Prawns.

After lunch we headed down to the river to see the sun setting over the Charles Bridge. The Charles Bridge is the most famous bridge in Prague, and is absolutely packed with tourists at any time of the day or night. The bridge was built in 1357 and was the only bridge connecting Prague Castle to the Old Town until 1841.

After the sun set we walked over the bridge into the Old Town to see the Christmas markets.

The bridge has over 30 different statues along the side and is full of different street vendors selling all kinds of things. We didn't see the appeal of it to be honest, and only used it to get across to the Old Town.

The Wenceslas Monument and the National Museum

We stopped at one of the many food stalls for dinner and decided on something that looked a bit like Pizza. It was on a garlic bread base with lots of cheese and tomato, very yummy but really messy. We spilt cheese everywhere!

The Astronomical Clock

After dinner we headed to the Christmas Markets at the Old Town Square. We stopped at the Astronomical Clock. Every hour on the hour the clock goes off and shows the procession of the Twelve Apostles. A little door opens and Christ comes out in front of his twelve apostles before a little Death skeleton comes out at the end.

The Christmas Markets in the Old Town centre were beautiful. They are open longer than the markets in Vienna, until after New Years, while the Austrian markets all close on Christmas Eve.

The location was what made it really lovely, the Square is full of old buildings and has a similar feel to the main street at Disneyland.

The Market seems to be busiest during the day, and wasn't that busy in the evening. We walked around all the stores and bought some Gingerbread to take back home with us.

After eating our fill of pretzels and gingerbread we headed back to the hotel, stopping on the way to view some of the beautiful churches all lit up with Christmas trees and lights.